A Breath of Frost (38 page)

Emma sat back on her heels, feeling confused and sad. Why had the wind pushed her here? What was the point? There was no evidence, no murderer to be found. Only another dead witch. It wasn’t fair.

Lightning broke the sky in half. Rain poured over them in a pelting, angry deluge before Emma got ahold of herself. The rain stopped but they were already drenched. A warm mist lifted off the shingles. She squinted through the veil it made, wondering what she was looking at. Then it hit her, but too late.

The Sisters.

They coalesced in a circle around them, wreathed in deadly flowers and blood. They ignored Emma and Moira at first, reaching for Strawberry. The shingles iced, crackling like crumpled
paper. The last of the rain misting the air turned to snow. Emma’s fingers tingled with cold, her hair freezing into icicles. Below them, ice coated the street, wrapped frost-flowers around the iron lamps, and blackened the flowers growing in decorative urns.

The Sisters opened their mouths, an unnatural darkness held between their jaws. Their heads fell back like overblown flowers on the pale stems of their necks. They opened their mouths, sucking in the last of Strawberry’s magic and ebbing life force. Her mouse tried to dart away but was caught by a vine of belladonna. It tightened around its neck, strangling. Fresh corresponding bruises formed on Strawberry’s throat. She jerked violently then lay limp, chest barely rising. Ice crawled over her, hardening the mended rips on her dress, her shawl, and finally, shattering her cameo of a gargoyle hanging below her bruises. She went from pale to gray. Her hair glistened with frost.

“Leave her be!” Moira snarled, scattering blue and white powder from a pouch on her belt. A white horse formed out of the misty puff of the powder. The mare was wild, with one blue eye, but she wasn’t enough, not while the Sisters were feeding.

“Bah, Keeper magic,” Rosmerta spat.

Her glow intensified, pulsing brightly until Emma’s eyes began to water. Rosmerta flicked her hand, her head still flung back, mouth open. A whip of dark amethyst-colored fire snapped around the mare’s hooves, binding her. She screamed and there was something unnervingly human about the sound. The Sisters were already more powerful than they’d been just days ago.

Moira shivered, trying to reach a weapon, any weapon. Emma’s teeth chattered so hard she bit the side of her tongue and tasted blood.

The Sisters paused.

Emma and Moira crawled closer to each other. Ice jabbed up like daggers between them, tearing through their sleeves, and peeling back the shingles. The Sisters floated together, approaching Emma as one.

“Yes.” Magdalena smiled a disturbing smile.

Fear made Emma’s throat spasm around a scream. She scattered salt and iron shavings. Strawberry’s blood stuck to her, freezing to tiny crystals. Mrs. Sparrow would have reminded her that staying calm was her best defense.

Mrs. Sparrow likely hadn’t been pinned to a rooftop by the spirits of three homicidal warlocks.

Emma could think of several better defenses but they all involved very sharp things, none of which she currently had in her possession. She barely had the strength to sit up. In fact, even as she tried to summon some sort of weather, she slumped over. They were draining her, not enough to kill her, at least not yet; but enough to shackle her in place.

Lark tried to stroke her hair. “Will you help me find my beloved?”

Moira inched away, all ice-burned cheeks and grim fury. Emma saw her flash a pointed glance at the gargoyle. Emma fumbled for her dagger with numb hands and flung it desperately. It sliced through Rosmerta, but since it wasn’t made of iron, it left no damage whatsoever. But at least she had their
attention. Their combined cold glares pinned her down. Moths and wasps buzzed around her.

Ice choked her lungs. Moira kept creeping toward the gargoyle, tiny perfect bat and bird bones bound in a ribbon clutched in her hand. She dropped the bundle between the gargoyle’s stone feet. Shivering from head to toe, she tried to uncork the flask from her waistcoat pocket. Emma wheezed, her frozen antlers clacking on the roof when she rolled over. Her familiar glowed, pushing light through them. It had never fully materialized before. It made her feel even stranger inside.

A portal cracked open. The fissure of violet light wavered, stretching and shooting off sparks.

“I said not her!” Ewan stepped through the gate, swinging a spectral ax.

The Sisters turned, hissing. The white horse took advantage of their lapse in concentration to break free, placing herself between the Sisters and the girls. It was too late for Strawberry.

Behind them, Moira finally managed to get the flask open. She poured a stream of gold whiskey out onto the bones, stopping to take a generous mouthful for herself.

“She is ours to claim,” Magdalena said, cold and calm in her hunger. “They all are.”

Ewan shimmered into the shape of a white stag, hooves flashing silver. The roof cracked where he landed. The gate elongated and the ghostly outlines of the Sisters’ dresses fluttered wildly. The portal pulled at them, sucking them in like a sinkhole. Rosmerta shrieked.

The white stag was a man again, fierce and foreboding.

“Stay here and be called back to the Underworld,” he declared, purple sparks falling off his ax, as though he was sharpening it on a whetstone. “The Wild Hunt rides and they would love to harvest the Sisters three.”

The gargoyle growled then, talons slicing through the cornices of the roof as it detached itself. Its leathery stone-colored wings flapped powerfully, sending another draft over the Sisters. They were sent closer to the portal, hissing. Magic seared the air.

Strawberry’s body moved, pulled by invisible hands. Moira clutched at her desperately. Ewan dug in his heels, scrabbling for purchase.

The gargoyle snapped its jaws together, swallowing a swarm of spectral moths. Beetles and fire ants marched up Magdalena’s hem for safety.

The white horse reared, bucking madly.

The Sisters flared once, blue as the heart of a flame, and then were gone.

The backdraft of energy from their sudden departure flung Strawberry like a rag doll. She was wrapped around the chimney, dangling dangerously.

“Wait!” Emma cried out as Ewan allowed himself to be pulled toward the portal. “Are you really my father?”

“You have my eyes.” He glanced at her, almost smiling, as he was pulled through the gate. “And my antlers.”

The gargoyle gave a rusty roar and crouched back on the ledge, scattering bits of broken stone onto the pavement below. The coachman stirred at the sound, waking from his stupor. He sat up, groaning and looking around, bemused.

Emma knew the exact moment the coachman looked up the side of the building to see her bending over the edge, her hands wet with blood, next to a dead girl.

“You!” he shouted, staring at Strawberry’s body, curled around the chimney. “It was you!”

“No!” Emma darted toward the ladder. “Wait!”

The coachman had already leaped back onto the carriage bench, the reins in his hands. “Call the Order!” he bellowed to no one at all, urging the horses into a gallop.

“You’ll never catch him,” Moira said. “But they’ll catch you.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“I’m a Madcap and you’re a Lovegrove,” she pointed out mercilessly. “Do you really think the truth matters?” She shook her head. “You’d better run. We’ll split up, that way at least one of us will have a better chance.” She looked dubiously at Emma’s embroidered dress with the net overlay and the diamonds in her ears. “Can you handle yourself?”

Emma thought of the lightning, the ghouls, and the Fith-Fath spell.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I think I can, actually.”

Emma stole
one of her father’s horses.

Well, Lord Hightower’s horses.

Technically she supposed he wasn’t her real father. Did he know Theodora had been carrying someone else’s baby? It seemed unlikely. He wasn’t the type to lend his illustrious family name to a girl born on the wrong side of the blanket.

She rode all night, wrapped in the Fith-Fath glamour. She didn’t just cover her antlers, but her entire body. She wouldn’t be spotted by a Keeper or accosted by a highwayman who might be haunting the parks between London and the Lovegrove country house. She murmured the charm until her voice broke and her throat ached and there was no room to think about parents and secrets.

It was still dark when she reached the manor. The windows were closed up tight, reflecting the fading moonlight. She circled
the house, until she found a partially open scullery window. She landed in the large sink and climbed out, catching her breath.

She released the Fith-Fath, exhausted. She needed every available ounce of magic left inside her to call the rain. The soft pitter-patter of water on the roof and the windows would hopefully mask the sound of her footsteps as she crept through the house. She stole up the stairs to open the door with the drooping flower handle.

Her mother was asleep in the wide uncurtained bed, hair tangled on her pillow, arms flung wide. Emma paused, watching her carefully. Her breathing stayed calm and deep and though her eyelids fluttered, they didn’t open. It felt strange to be inside the house again, especially as an intruder. She didn’t have the luxury of waiting. If the Order thought her responsible for Strawberry’s death, they wouldn’t stop until they found her. She had to link the clues together into a pattern, a constellation of stars that made sense when linked together.

She turned to the oak tree first. There was no doubt in her mind that it was key to the whole puzzle. According to Mrs. Peabody, her mother had instructed Aunt Bethany very carefully on the details and placement of the trees. Emma just knew if she could find the oak, she could find her mother’s witch bottle, and release her from her prison. Emma, Penelope, and Gretchen had already claimed their powers and their family name, and Emma knew the truth about her father. There was no reason for her to suffer anymore.

She circled the room again, trying to find clues in the
placement of the painted trees. She didn’t see any kind of pattern.

Not until she happened to glance up.

The whole room was a map, not just the oak tree and the red bird.

It was painted a deep blue with gilded paint along the edges and set throughout in a very precise pattern. She connected the gold dots easily, with an excited exhalation.

They formed star constellations.

The lion stalks the maiden fair, when the bear leaves his lair. But where the hunter goes, only the serpent knows
.

The lion, the maiden, and the bear weren’t familiars.

They were the spring constellations of Leo, Virgo, and Boötes.

Hydra was a kind of serpent, and another star pattern. Orion was the hunter. And the Hydra’s head looked down.

Onto the oak tree and her mother’s spell.

But only now, during the springtime, when the stars aligned properly. And according to the stars outside the window, the tree was south of the house in Windsor Forest, which she’d already guessed. But if she saw the whole room as a map, she knew it was also slightly to the west and tucked near a silver river.

That wasn’t quite enough. There was another clue missing.

Gold is good but silver’s better
.

Both her mother and Ewan had spoken those words to her.

She paced the room softly, staring up at the painted ceiling. A silver circle crossed a gold circle. Was it meant to be an
eclipse? The paintings were crudely done, like the red bird. Clearly they were an addition. She thought hard, but couldn’t remember hearing of any eclipse expected this spring. She stared at them for a long time, until they blurred and looked like rings.

Rings.

People in love got married and had babies.

She looked around wildly until she saw the spellbox she’d left her mother. It was on the windowsill, under the moon and the shadow of the forest. But it was empty.

She stole to her mother’s bedside. She was still wearing the silver ring, the bound antler dangling over her knuckle. Emma reached out to slip the ring free. Her mother clenched her fist and rolled over.

Emma went around to the other side of the bed, waiting until her mother began to snore softly. She moved with excruciating slowness, coaxing her mother’s hand open, and then slipping the ring off as fast as she could, trying not to squeak with alarm. She examined it carefully, wiggling the iron nail back and forth, like a loose tooth. It finally pulled free and she could unwrap the thread. The two rings tumbled into her palm.

A thin trail of what looked like silver pollen sparkled out of the plain silver ring. A curl of gold powder did the same from the traditional gold wedding ring. It unfurled like a ribbon, toward her father’s manor house next door. It must have been her mother’s wedding ring.

The silver path whirled and danced like mist, snaking into the forest.

Gold is good but silver’s better
.

The silver ring was something else altogether.

She ran downstairs and followed it, palms damp and breaths shallow in her throat. It was cold outside, the grass heavy with dew. The stars shone, but the darkness was slowly going soft and gray, like rabbit fur.